Original Synth: Hotpress meets Maighread

With a name like Maighread, we’re not going to have any trouble laying claim to this hype-generating soul-pop export, and a good thing, too – her current single ‘Sooner’ is a club smash in the making, a powerful slab of fiery, epic electro that could charm a mid-broadcast Pat Kenny onto the dancefloor.

“I’ve always played music,” she tells Hot Press, from her home in London. “As a kid I jumped between instruments, I was always getting lessons. I started piano when I was really young but I when I was about 14 or 15, I really wanted to get on a guitar and luckily my piano teacher at the time, Aidan Boland, also taught guitar. So I started doing both instruments with him.
‘He was the one who said to me to start writing,” she adds, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “I don’t think I would have even thought about doing it if it wasn’t for him. I came back to class the next week with a song written and just kept writing!”
Does she ever go back to her teenage scribbles for inspiration?
“Never,” she flinches. “There’s so much stuff that I’ve written over the years and I’ve always just left it behind. I used to write loads and loads in notebooks and I think I even burned some of them!”
After detouring through acoustic folk and finding herself the front woman of a handful of alt. rock outfits, Maighread finally arrived in shimmering synth pop territory, which proved to be the perfect home for those soulful vocal chops of hers.
“I always wanted to get into electronic music,” she remembers. “That’s where I wanted to be. It was just a case of, ‘OK how do I start making it?’ I bought a little synth years ago and started making stuff very simply, just had my own set-up at home. I got a little studio in my bedroom. It wasn’t until I started working with a producer that I could fulfill it. There was only so far I could bring stuff on my own. I could hear what I wanted it to sound like in my head. I didn’t know how to actually get there!”
Having forged a creative partnership with London audio visual team DiZ-Co – cohorts of Roisin Murphy and Friendly Fires no less! – Maighread came up with new single ‘Sooner’. The track is released both digitally, and as a limited-edition EP, packaged with remixes by Arveene and Misk, FiK and Hurr and DIZQO. The project was part-funded via Pledge Music.
“It was great that people bought into the project,” she beams. “You have people who are egging you on and that was really good. Also, when you’re an independent artist, timelines and deadlines can kind of go out the window, especially when you’re creating them yourself, so it does give you that date that you’ve got to hit! With a lot of independent artists, we’re up against major artists. We’re all competing for the same thing. It also reminds you that a lot of people are trying to do stuff on their own.”